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China fast approaching 1bn mobile connections

China is on track to surpass 1bn mobile connections in Q1 of 2012, with market penetration currently estimated at 72%.

The latest data from Wireless Intelligence shows that China ended 2011 on 973.7m connections, an increase of around 16% year-on-year.

The growth has largely been driven by 3G connections, which surpassed 200m in Q4 and accounted for 22% of the total by year-end.

In 2011 3G accounted for 80% of new connections in China, an estimated 26.8m out of a total of 34.2m.

There are three different 3G providers in China – China Mobile, Unicom and China Telecom – each running a slightly different version of the mobile service.

China Mobile dominates the industry with an estimated 648.7m connections, equivalent to a 67% market share.

The choice of handsets is also growing – Unicom has been the exclusive provider of iPhone since 2009, though China Telecom is said to be close to launching a version of the handset.

China Mobile hasn’t officially launched the device, but it is thought to have millions of GSM-enabled iPhones running on its 2G network.

Last year Apple said that China was its second-most important market after the US, accounting for 16% of its total revenue in Q4 2011, so it is likely that official deals will be in the works.

Both Unicom and China Mobile have their own Android handsets that tie-in to their own app stores.

Unicom said that it planned to ship 90m low-cost smartphones this year and a further 60m high-end devices.

This, combined with a booming market in terms of internet use (the number of web users in China is greater than the total population of the EU), a better understanding of the Chinese market is a must for digitally-savvy brands with global growth in their sights.

Plus, since the population of China is around 1.3bn and there are 10m new internet users per month – there’s still plenty of room for growth.

As the dust settles from the frantic Christmas and New Year sales trading season I’m now able to provide a definitive account of how our
advertisers’ affiliate campaigns performed throughout December.

Having previously looked at the impact of Cyber and Manic Monday on the affiliate channel we can trace December’s performance, compare it with 2010’s and also split out mobile data to see how it compared with traditional desktop transactions.

Stats from Hitwise indicated that Boxing Day was the biggest online shopping day in terms of traffic so it is also possible to see if that was reflected across the affiliate channel.

Businesses may be tiring of services like Groupon, and overaggressive retailers may have bargained themselves into a less profitable holiday shopping season, but one thing is for sure: consumers love discounts.

Who can blame them? The global economy nearly collapsed in 2008, and it’s been tough since then. Companies eager to separate consumers from their hard-earned dollars have often had little choice but to lure customers in with prices too hard to pass up.

Yahoo’s co-founder, Jerry Yang, has resigned from the company he cultivated for 17 years to pursue new opportunities. This announcement comes only two weeks after the appointment of Scott Thompson as Yahoo’s new CEO.

In a statement to the board, Yang wrote, “My time at Yahoo, from its founding to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life. However, the time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo.”

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